Theresa Lewis

During one of her stints as a traveling nurse, my sister was assigned to a little cabin in the woods in New Hampshire. She was so enchanted with the setting that she called to tell me all about it. She said that it was the kind of place that made you want to get up in the morning and have waffles and bacon for breakfast. Her description gave me a clear mental image of it. You cannot imagine how excited I was when she invited me to spend a week there with her.

When I arrived, she took me on a tour of her new home. It was all that she had said it was. When I saw the bathroom, I was more than impressed. It was so huge that you could have held a party in there. Even more impressive was the fact that it had a Jacuzzi. I had never seen one before except on television. I asked her if she had tried the Jacuzzi yet. She said she hadn’t as yet, but she had cleaned it with bleach in preparation for my visit. She showed me the operating instruction sheet that was taped to the wall beside the light switch.

I had brought my own toiletries with me, but she offered me to use her expensive body wash. I had seen the ads on television for her body wash, but I had never used it before. The ads depict a beautiful slender young woman swathed in satin ribbons as she gracefully floats and spins through the air in slow motion. That product is supposed to leave the skin feeling satiny smooth after bathing. I couldn’t wait to try it out.

My only stumbling block to using the Jacuzzi was the fact that I am too stiff to get in and out of a bathtub. I prefer showers. Every day, I eyed that Jacuzzi and wished I could muster up the courage to try it. Finally, with only one more day left of my stay with my sister, I convinced myself that it was now, or never. I don’t usually do well with written instructions, but they looked fairly straight forward. I was sure I could manage it. Besides, I was fed up with my sister calling me chicken every day.

After my sister left for work, I double locked the doors and put the night chain on to keep myself safe during the day while she was at work. I went into the bathroom and filled the tub as full as I could. I read and re-read the instructions. It said to set the timer for fifteen minutes. I did that. I shed my robe and climbed into the tub. I felt like a queen as I was lowering myself into the water. I sat and waited for the fun to start. I waited and waited and waited. Nothing happened. I thought that fifteen minutes was too long. I wished that I had only set the timer for five minutes. Five minutes would have been more than enough time to get myself into the tub. Oh, well, I thought, I might as well get washed while I am waiting for the jets to start. With my washcloth in hand, I reached for my sister’s luxurious body wash. I lathered my body all over then leaned back to rinse myself off.

The tub was longer than I realized and it had a straight back that I hadn’t noticed before. I slid under the water and banged my head on the floor of the tub. It was a moment of sheer panic that caused me to try to make a grab for the sides of the tub. At the same instant that I submerged myself, I banged my elbow on the side of the tub and hit the start button that until that moment, I didn’t know it was there. With my head under water, the roar of the jets frightened the wits out of me. I think I siphoned up half of the tub water through my nostrils before I came up sputtering and gasping for air.

Once I regained my composure, I held onto the sides of the tub and slowly leaned back and lowered myself in the water up to my chin. After a fright like that, I welcomed a few moments of relaxation.

All of a sudden, after only a few moments, the Jacuzzi jets coughed and out shot a multi-colored hairball the size of a ping pong ball. The multi-colored ball traveled towards my mouth at an alarming rate and threatened to assault my lower lip. With a lot of splashing and wild flinging of both arms, I managed to do a miraculous save and scooped the giant hairball out of the tub and flicked it onto the floor. It was a feat that almost caused me to drown again. I was thoroughly revolted. I wanted to get out of the tub. I stopped the jets. With utmost dexterity, I used my toes to pull the plug. That was another feat that almost caused me to drown again. For some unknown poorly thought out reason, I thought it would be easier to get out of the tub once all the water was gone. I had survived three near fatal drownings and was not willing to try for a fourth. Removing all the water was when the trouble really started. The diabolical forces of nature told me to drain the tub for my own safety.

I stayed put until the tub was drained. In trying to get up, I slipped and fell back on my butt. It hurt. I tried again and fell on my shoulder. That fall sent a searing pain across my back. Every attempt to try to stand up ended in my falling and causing myself another painful injury to another part of my anatomy. Still, I tried. I did manage to get up on my knees at one point only to end up doing the splits and falling on my face. That pain was sickening. Women’s bodies my age are not designed to do the splits. I was sure I would never be the same again after that trick. I lay there feeling exasperated and exhausted. I was running out of strength. I made a few more feeble attempts, all to no avail. With my energy totally spent, I decided that the best thing to do was to just stay there and wait for my sister to come home. After my struggling stopped, I was starting to get cold. I didn’t like the thought of waiting for my sister to get home, but I didn’t have a choice at that moment. I would just have to suffer the humiliation of having her drag my slippery naked anatomy out of the tub.

As I lay there in a state of complete exhaustion, I suddenly remembered that I had locked myself in right after she left for work. I had even put on the safety chain. She couldn’t get into the house. With a sense of utter panic, I realized that I would have to find a way to get out of the tub that at that point had held me captive for hours. I was naked, extremely slippery and my teeth were chattering from the cold. I pondered my dilemma for a few more moments. I came to the conclusion that my sister’s body wash had been deceptively named. Satin Ribbons, it wasn’t. It was nothing more than perfume scented pig fat. But then, if they called it that, who would buy it?

I looked across the vast expanse of the bathroom and spotted a clothes rack with two thick fluffy bath towels hanging from it. With intense longing in my heart, I tried to will the towels to come to me. They didn’t budge. I pleaded and pleaded, to no avail. I even broke down and prayed for deliverance at one point. God didn’t hear me. I have heard that faith can move mountains. I wondered if my faith was so weak that it couldn’t even move a frigging bath towel across the room. I think God was too busy laughing at me to offer me any assistance.

Time passed slowly. I just lay there all battered and bruised from numerous falls. The worst of the injuries was when I did the splits. I was sure I had torn something vital. There wasn’t a square inch of my body that didn’t hurt. At that point, I was stiffer than before I had begun the process.

Suddenly, I felt the urge to go to the toilet. If I just had to pee, it would simply run down the drain and no one would be any the wiser. However, that was not the case. Somehow, I couldn’t imagine myself doing what nature intended me to do then having to poke it down the drain afterwards. I was desperate and in great distress. I had to get up, I had no choice.

I spied my eight inch square washcloth and wondered if it would be big enough to give me the traction I needed. I wrung it out and laid it over the side of the tub and hooked my chin on it. After much struggling and a lot of grunting, I managed to get up on my knees without doing the splits again. I hung my arms over the edge of the tub and basically clawed my way over the edge of the tub and in a very undignified manner, I plopped onto the floor. It was a victorious moment. Oh, joy, I had finally escaped my prison. I crawled over to the toilet that was situated in the middle of a long wall with nothing else around it. I pulled myself up by holding onto the sides of the toilet. No sooner did my butt touch the plastic seat when I slipped off and landed on the floor again. This time I was undaunted. I crawled over to the towel rack and helped myself to a large fluffy towel. I wiped off as much of the Satin Ribbons as I could, then headed back to the toilet to finish what nature implored me to do.

Once the trauma was over, I put on my robe and slippers and left the torture chamber that had held me captive for hours. I unlocked the doors and went into the kitchen to sit and wait for my sister to come home from work. As soon as she arrived, she asked me if I had had a good day. I practically burst into tears.